i've been listening to a fair amount of hype over the new social security plan.
my personal take is that is sucks, and it doesn't address the real problem - the number of jobs in the us with no benefits, and the increasingly apparent habit of business forcing out employees who are nearing retirement age, making their lives a living hell so they will quit before their pension is valid.
i remember very well thirty-five years ago when sears employees were all cut back to irregular part-time hours so that they would not be entitled to medical, retirement, or vacation time.
it didn't take long for every other department store to follow their lead. nobody yelled about it, because the only people it affected were some of the least likely to bother to vote, so there weren't any politicians to stand up on their behalf.
they were mostly lower middle class white folks back then, so there wasn't any reason of any political action group to care, and pretty soon, hundreds of thousands of working poor with little or no education were put on schedule for certain poverty when they reached retirement age.
we let clinton send all of our jobs overseas with NAFTA, sending another chunk of people into the same kind of poverty. this time, they were people of color, too, but the unions up north had gotten too greedy, so nobody cared what color they were.
we don't *make* anything in this country anymore. we've become a huge service industry, farming out our manufacturing and training our young to sit in front of desks with clean hands, where, surprisingly enough, they have suddenly found out that *their* benefits are eroding, and *their* jobs are being shipped overseas.
i often think that the best way to insure our children have a decent living these days is to encourage them to eschew careers in law and medicine, and take up trades like plumbing, you can't send to taiwan when your toilet is overflowing, you know?
my personal take is that is sucks, and it doesn't address the real problem - the number of jobs in the us with no benefits, and the increasingly apparent habit of business forcing out employees who are nearing retirement age, making their lives a living hell so they will quit before their pension is valid.
i remember very well thirty-five years ago when sears employees were all cut back to irregular part-time hours so that they would not be entitled to medical, retirement, or vacation time.
it didn't take long for every other department store to follow their lead. nobody yelled about it, because the only people it affected were some of the least likely to bother to vote, so there weren't any politicians to stand up on their behalf.
they were mostly lower middle class white folks back then, so there wasn't any reason of any political action group to care, and pretty soon, hundreds of thousands of working poor with little or no education were put on schedule for certain poverty when they reached retirement age.
we let clinton send all of our jobs overseas with NAFTA, sending another chunk of people into the same kind of poverty. this time, they were people of color, too, but the unions up north had gotten too greedy, so nobody cared what color they were.
we don't *make* anything in this country anymore. we've become a huge service industry, farming out our manufacturing and training our young to sit in front of desks with clean hands, where, surprisingly enough, they have suddenly found out that *their* benefits are eroding, and *their* jobs are being shipped overseas.
i often think that the best way to insure our children have a decent living these days is to encourage them to eschew careers in law and medicine, and take up trades like plumbing, you can't send to taiwan when your toilet is overflowing, you know?